MoJo Author Feeds: Sydney Brownstone | Mother Joneshttp://www.motherjones.com/rss/authors/179291
http://www.motherjones.com/files/motherjonesLogo_google_206X40.pngMother Jones logohttp://www.motherjones.com
enCan Silicon Valley Make Fake Meat and Eggs That Don't Suck?http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/12/beyond-eggs-meat-josh-tetrick
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
<html><body><div class="inline inline-left" style="display: table; width: 1%"><img alt="" class="image" src="/files/eggs_a_630_0.jpg"><div class="caption">Illustration: Ross MacDonald</div>
</div>
<p><span class="section-lead">We stood in an airy San Francisco warehouse, </span>staring at two plastic cups of gleaming mayonnaise. A golden retriever snored lightly in a patch of sunlight on the floor as Josh Tetrick, the 33-year-old founder of Hampton Creek Foods, waited for me to scoop up the fluffy, effulgent goop with a chunk of bread. Tetrick's team of food scientists had tried making mayonnaise without eggs no less than 1,432 times. This formula was the 1,433rd.</p>
<p>"The egg is this unbelievable miracle of nature that has really been perverted by an unsustainable system," Tetrick, a former West Virginia University linebacker and Fulbright Scholar, had explained to me earlier on our tour of the Hampton Creek Foods facility, a well-lit, cavernous space with rows of metal lab tables, bright red couches, and chalkboards.</p>
<p>Mod warehouse, hip startup, vegan eggs&mdash;it all struck me as a little too precious for the big time. But Tetrick is adamant that his product has a market beyond this rarefied universe. "We're not just about selling and preaching to the converted," he says. "This isn't just going to happen in San Francisco, in a world of vegans. This is going to happen in Birmingham, Alabama. This is going to happen in Missouri, in Philadelphia."</p>
<p>I let the eggless mayo dissolve in my mouth like a fine chocolate truffle. It tasted exactly like the real mayo that I've slathered on sandwiches countless times before. If I hadn't known that it was fake, I never would have guessed.</p>
<p>Over the next five years, Hampton Creek Foods, backed by $3 million from Sun Microsystems cofounder Vinod Khosla's venture capital firm, will first hawk its product to manufacturers of prepared foods like pasta, cookies, and dressings&mdash;the processed products that use about a third of all the eggs in the United States. Then it will aim directly for your omelet with an Egg Beaters-like packaged product. The goal, Tetrick explains, is to replace all factory-farmed eggs in the US market&mdash;more than 80 billion eggs, valued at $213.7 billion.</p>
<p>Beyond Eggs isn't the only fake-food startup in Silicon Valley. In the last couple of years, venture capitalists, including Bill Gates and the cofounders of Twitter, have been pouring serious cash into ersatz animal products. Their goal is to transform the food system the same way Apple changed how we use phones, or how Google changed the way we find information.</p>
<div class="inline inline-left" style="display: table; width: 1%"><img alt="Josh Tetrick" class="image" src="/files/EGGS_B_300.jpg"><div class="caption"><strong>Josh Tetrick </strong>Photo by Matthew Reamer</div>
</div>
<p>These new products are not the Boca Burgers of the '90s, thinly concealed soy loaves designed to make vegetarians feel less ostracized at a barbecue. Rather, these entrepreneurs are determined to realign plant proteins into tasting and feeling exactly like meat. The goal is not a slightly improved Tofurky&mdash;it's a product that could trick even the most discerning of steak eaters.</p>
<p>Sound a little grandiose? Well, yeah&mdash;but welcome to Silicon Valley, where you'd be laughed out of your pitch meeting if your startup didn't promise to change the world. And food industry experts think that Tetrick and his ilk might actually have a shot. According to the market research firm Mintel, some 28 percent of Americans are trying to consume fewer meat products. Patty Johnson, a Mintel analyst, believes that this group, many of them following doctors' orders to cut cholesterol, will be game to try meat substitutes that don't require them to change their recipes. "Products that can mimic chicken the best will do well with that group&mdash;the reluctant vegetarians," she says. "I think that they have a potential to carve out some share there in the mainstream consumer market."<br>
&nbsp;</p>
<p><span class="section-lead">If there's a ted Talk gene,</span> Tetrick has it. A former sustainability associate for Citigroup, investment law adviser for Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and White House intern under President Clinton, he has bright eyes, tanned arms, and wiry hands that constantly pantomime his words. When Tetrick pitches Beyond Eggs, he begins with a story about how most of the United States' eggs are produced by birds pumped full of corn, soy, and antibiotics in giant rows of cages. "Female birds are packed body to body in tiny cages so small they can't flap their wings," he says, enunciating every syllable in a slight twang that hints at his Alabama childhood. "They never see the sunlight. They never touch the soil."</p>
<p>Tetrick is a vegan, but "as a company, we're not about starting a conversation about whether you shouldn't eat animals or you should eat animals," he explains. Regular people should be able to eat what they want without guilt, he says: "Does my mom, when she eats a muffin, really have to subconsciously contribute to that type of unsustainable system? Can my little brother have a cookie? My God, can my dad have a Twinkie?"</p>
<p>To that end, Tetrick's two engineers, six biochemists, and 11 food scientists are on a single-minded quest to hack the egg and its 22 functional properties&mdash;foaming, emulsifying, coagulating, and so on. Their workshop is more laboratory than kitchen; among its host of moisture and texture analyzers is a piston that measures the springiness of a muffin.</p>
<p>It all begins, says Megan Clements, Tetrick's former director of "emulsion innovation," with powdered protein isolate, also commonly used in veggie burgers and energy bars. "Our processing isn't any more intensive than chickpea flour that you might buy from your local organic grocery store," Tetrick says.</p>
<p>That's not exactly true. Over the past two years, Tetrick estimates that his team has looked at the molecular weight of nearly a thousand plant proteins. His biochemists will buy pea protein isolate, for example, and run it through gel electrophoresis, a method also used in DNA analysis, to find out whether that protein can mimic the way an egg white foams up. The next step is processing&mdash;essentially putting the isolates through a mill with very particular specs for heat, speed, and pressure. He can't tell me too much past that without getting into patented secrets, but he says that the more gentle the processing, the better. "It's branched-chain amino acids, and if we mess with it too much, that protein will unfold," he says. If that happens, the whole experiment collapses, and the scientists can no longer make the substance behave like an egg.</p>
<p>Tetrick's product has already fooled some key testers. Eight months before my tour, at a high-profile Khosla Ventures investment conference, Beyond Eggs staged a blind tasting of its blueberry muffin and a real-egg version. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair reported that he couldn't tell the difference. Neither could Bill Gates&mdash;who was so impressed he became an investor in the company. This past March, Gates featured Beyond Eggs, along with a fake-meat company called Beyond Meat (no relation) and salt-substitute maker Nu-Tek Salt, in an online presentation called "The Future of Food." In it, he enthused: "We're just at the beginning of enormous innovation in this space. For a world full of people who would benefit from getting a nutritious, protein-rich diet, this makes me very optimistic."<br>
&nbsp;</p>
<p><span class="section-lead">Like Beyond Eggs,</span> Beyond Meat is trying to fully replicate the experience of eating animal products: It currently makes impostor chicken strips and soon plans to move on to artificial ground beef and pork. Backed by Obvious Corp., the investing team launched by Twitter's cofounders, as well as Kleiner Perkins Caufield &amp; Byers (one of the first venture capital firms to invest in Amazon and Google), Beyond Meat sees itself as part of the transition to a future in which "meat" can mean hyper-realistic plant substitutes. Beyond Meat's Chicken-Free Strips are sold at Whole Foods and are set to hit conventional supermarkets by early 2014.</p>
<p>"We call it 'transformative agriculture,'" explains Amol Deshpande, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins. Beyond Meat is the first food company Kleiner Perkins has funded, but Deshpande says the firm is expanding: "There are going to be 9 billion people on the planet to feed. We have to think more broadly." Indeed, Beyond Meat calculates that its process is 55 times more efficient than beef farming when it comes to land use, and 18 times more efficient than raising poultry.</p></body></html>
<p style="font-size: 1.083em;"><a href="/environment/2013/12/beyond-eggs-meat-josh-tetrick"><strong><em>Continue Reading &raquo;</em></strong></a></p>EnvironmentFoodTechTop StoriesMon, 02 Dec 2013 10:55:05 +0000Sydney Brownstone235146 at http://www.motherjones.comQ & A: "Picking Up" by Robin Naglehttp://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2013/08/picking-streets-and-behind-trucks-sanitation-workers-new-york-city
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
<html><body><div class="inline inline-left" style="display: table; width: 1%;"><img alt="book cover" class="image" src="/files/picking-up-250x300.jpg"><span _fck_bookmark="1" style="display: none;">&nbsp;</span></div>
<p><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780374299293-0" target="_blank"><strong>Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks With the Sanitation Workers of New York City</strong></a></p>
<p><strong>By Robin Nagle</strong></p>
<p><strong>FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX</strong></p>
<p>Skewered eyeballs, bags of hydrofluoric acid, and discarded $1,325 Armani pants with the price tag still attached pepper Robin Nagle's account of what it takes to be a New York City "san man." From her stint as an official anthropologist-in-residence at the Department of Sanitation, Nagle explores how crucial this unseen work is to a city's survival. It's no dry social-research thesis: With<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><em>Picking Up</em>, Nagle joins the likes of Jane Jacobs and Jacob Riis, writers with the chutzpah to dig deep into the Rube Goldberg machine we call the Big Apple and emerge with a lyrical, clear-eyed look at how it works.</p>
<p>Nagle spoke to <em>Mother Jones</em> via Skype about how she was able to gain the trust of the DSNY and her sanitation coworkers in order to write the book, the hazards she faced on the job, and why a collective fear of death could be shaping our attitudes toward trash.</p>
<p><strong>Mother Jones:</strong> You told some stories in the book about sanitation workers who receive all sorts of horrific injuries on the job. Before you started accompanying sanitation on its daily routes, did you have any idea how dangerous it would be?</p>
<p><strong>Robin Nagle:</strong> I had read the Bureau of Labor Statistics' numbers about how sanitation work is always in the top 10 of the most dangerous occupations in the country, along with things like mining and deep sea fishing and logging. I knew from reading about it that it was a hazardous job, but I didn't have any sense of how often I would encounter those hazards myself or see my colleagues encounter those hazards every day. I don't care where we were in the city; if we were on the street picking up trash there would be a moment pretty much guaranteed in every shift where we'd just have to pull back and be very careful, or we would have gotten hurt.</p>
<p><strong>MJ: </strong>One thing that struck me was how much our individual waste habits affect sanitation workers. How you put a bag out onto the street could ruin someone's day or potentially someone's life. Which of these habits most directly impact sanitation workers, and which would you like to see change after writing this book?</p>
<p><strong>RN:</strong> I'm very glad you picked up on that. When you put out your garbage--and of course I'm using the generic "you"--you are not the last person who will have to deal with it. When you have, let's say, a piece of broken glass, or something really jagged, or you're doing a renovation and you're putting out wood that's got nails blooming out from one tip of it, or any kind of hazard you know handling requires great care, think about how to perhaps add a few layers of buffer packaging, sandwiching, anything diminishing the hazard a little bit. As a householder, as a garbage-creator, just being a little more mindful of the fact that once it's on the curb or in the can, that's not the end point by any means. There are so many moments of physical handling after that.</p>
<p><strong>MJ:</strong> Something else you detail in the book is how you were able to gain access to the DSNY in the first place. Could you tell us a little bit about how, not only you were able to gain that access, but also gain the trust of the sanitation <span class="il">workers</span> you worked with?</p>
<p><strong>RN:</strong> There's one really encompassing answer to both of those questions, and that's time. I was in a position where I could wait out the bureaucratic stalling I first encountered from the DSNY, and when one mayor left and another was elected, that was my door in. But that took a few years. In terms of the issue of trust, that's a common challenge for anyone doing extended work, especially in situations where journalists&mdash;in journalists it's more of a hit and run relationship. You get in, you get the story, you get out. They knew that model well. And it usually reverberated badly for them. So when I showed up, their instinct and their wisdom told them to keep a distance, which of course I in my naivete did not anticipate. And when I finally figured out all those dynamics, it made perfect sense. At the beginning, I was as clueless as an absolutely new anthropologist or first-time journalist who's puppyish with enthusiasm: "I'm in, and everyone's gonna love me!" Nuh uh. Not at all.</p>
<p><strong>MJ:</strong> What were your biggest challenges there? Were there moments you felt you had to prove yourself to your coworkers?</p>
<p><strong>RN:</strong> All the time. It's largely a <span class="il">man</span>'s world. So there would be the challenges of some jokes that were a little off-color. Like, they were bodied, or they were just raw. And those were tests of, "Is she prissy? Is she prudish? Is she going to judge us for this?" And once I got to particular garages, I realized they didn't normally talk like that. It was partly a show for me. Any time I was on the street I was very eager to be the first one on the street picking up whatever it was that needed to be lifted, because I didn't want people to say, "Oh, she's a girl, she's not strong enough." But one of the ways I overcame the initial doubts about me is that I kept showing up and my story never changed. I was consistent. And not because I set out to be, but because the project just took a long time. And people realized that if they told me things, they didn't get hurt. Telling me wouldn't go back to the people who would discipline them.</p>
<p><strong>MJ:</strong> You also discuss garbage as more than a physical problem, but an ideological one.</p>
<p><strong>RN:</strong> I think Americans in general&mdash;the anthropologist in me is screaming not to make that broad generalization&mdash;but Americans in general don't deal well with death. And I think garbage is threatening because it's a form of death. It's a material object that's been consigned to this endplace. Our end is as inevitable&mdash;and who knows?&mdash;maybe as messy and difficult as the things we throw away everyday. The casualness with which we create discards, and the difficulty of grappling with the fact of our own mortality, I think are also linked. But I think the ideologies of garbage, there's an economic component to this. If we really looked at the waste stream of the nation, the constructions of capitalism we take for granted...I don't see how we could possibly let them continue.</p>
<p><strong>MJ:</strong> Another theme you bring up quite often is invisibility. It struck me how DSNY workers resembled a caste of untouchables in your account of how they're perceived, and often the butt of jokes.</p>
<p><strong>RN:</strong> How the outside world sees you when you're wearing the uniform, sometimes it's infuriating, the dehumanizing attitude you encounter on the streets. And generally, the more affluent the neighborhood, there's more likely that there's going to be condescension. At least that's an informal sample of my own experience. There are others that feel intensely enough that they don't tell neighbors what they do for a living. They don't want anyone outside of their work environment know what they do for a living. And they don't want to have to encounter and then have the burden of the judgment of neighbors and acquaintances who assume they know what that means and then push that onto the worker.</p>
<p>But I've talked to people in the managerial ranks who were promoted up off the street, and I tell them, your job is the most important job in the city. Far more important than mine. If I stop working tomorrow, if the program I run at NYU folded tomorrow, if the university folded tomorrow, a lot of people would be out of work, but the dynamics of the city&mdash;I don't know if you'd feel it in eastern Queens, or in Inwood. If sanitation just stopped today, you'd feel it in Inwood today, or eastern Queens, and right here at NYU. So, there are lots of ways of measuring the worth of a particular form of labor, but what I learned at sanitation is how inside-out that values system has become.</p>
<p><strong>MJ:</strong> I couldn't help but think of Jane Jacobs and her ideas about how city blocks and neighborhoods ought to function when reading your book. Do you have any plans to articulate a series of theses on how the city should be run?</p>
<p><strong>RN:</strong> No. It's not so much how cities should be run as it is how we need to understand all the parts of the systems that we depend on every day, and how deeply dependent we are on human beings to make those systems run smoothly. And I'd love to see somebody do a book like mine with New York City's waterworks department, the Department of Environmental Protection. I claim that sanitation is the most important uniformed force on the streets of New York--I think you can make a parallel claim for the small army that keeps the waterworks of the city running smoothly.</p>
<p>My next writing project will focus on Freshkills, the landfill and now park. But I want to use that as a fulcrum on which to balance stories about fill, and how garbage and discards have shaped the physical geography of New York and many cities. Because of that we walk on our own history every day, but we're largely unaware of it. So my next project is not so much about how cities work, but: What is the dynamic of creation, and memory, and loss, and discard, and garbage? And whose claims are heard and whose claims are ignored when those issues are at play?</p>
<p><strong>MJ:</strong> How did you balance being a person who gets to know her sources quite well as friends and colleagues, in addition to being a nonfiction writer and academic documenting their work?</p>
<p><strong>RN:</strong> I kind of have followed my own version of the Hippocratic oath. Most people were surprised that I brought the book to them before it was a finished product. I was very careful not to say to anyone, "I will make whatever changes you want." My passion for this work, for them, for what they do, it's quite real. This is the first book that's been written about the New York City Department of Sanitation, but there are lots of books about the police department, lots of books about the fire department. I think there should be lots of books about sanitation. And just as in any other workforce, there are people who are not so saintly, and people on the more saintly end of the spectrum. You just hope it reads as real.</p></body></html>
Mixed MediaBooksLaborSat, 03 Aug 2013 10:00:06 +0000Sydney Brownstone215011 at http://www.motherjones.comTig Notaro: You'll Laugh, You'll Cry http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/04/interview-tig-notaro-cancer-professor-blastoff-inside-amy-schumer
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
<html><body><p align="left"><strong>Update (6/13/2016):</strong> Tig's new memoir, "<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062266637/im-just-a-person" target="_blank">I'm Just a Person</a>," is out this week.</p>
<p align="left">----</p>
<p align="left">One evening last August, comedian Tig Notaro sat at home in Los Angeles, wondering what she'd tell the crowd at the Largo club. Five months earlier she'd fought off pneumonia only to be waylaid by a gut infection that siphoned 20 pounds off her scrappy frame. Then her mother died and her relationship crumbled. Through it all, she had managed to keep people laughing, but a diagnosis of stage II breast cancer the day before had left her at wit's end. When the solution finally dawned on her, she couldn't stop laughing. That night she bounded onstage, waving: "Good evening! Hello. I have cancer! How are you?"</p>
<p align="left">What followed "was one of the greatest standup performances I ever saw," <a href="https://buy.louisck.net/news/about-tig-notaro" target="_blank">wrote Louis C.K.</a>, who posted the set on his website. Soon Notaro was everywhere. She did a segment on <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/contributors/tig-notaro" target="_blank"><em>This American Life</em></a>, landed a book deal, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/tig-notaro-live/id570071953" target="_blank">released a live recording</a>, and, after a double mastectomy, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raccHkvOb-g" target="_blank">appeared on Conan</a> and teamed up with comedian pals Kyle Dunnigan and Amy Schumer to write <a href="http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/inside-amy-schumer" target="_blank"><em>Inside Amy Schumer</em></a>, a new series that debuts April 30 on Comedy Central.</p>
<p align="left">She's also set to <a href="http://tignation.com/tour-dates/" target="_blank">commence a tour</a> with Dunnigan and comedian David Huntsberger, doing a live version of their popular weekly podcast, <a href="http://professorblastoff.com/" target="_blank"><em>Professor Blastoff</em>.</a> I spoke with Notaro, 42, about her Huck Finn childhood, turning tragedy into comedy, and what to say to someone who has cancer. But first, listen to her "No Moleste" shtick&hellip;</p>
<p align="left"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="473" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/HwqPeVkiDR4?rel=0" width="630"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Mother Jones:</strong> So how did this motley crew of comedians end up doing a podcast about religion, science, and philosophy?</p>
<p><strong>Tig Notaro:</strong> David and I used to live together, and it seemed like he was always talking about that kind of stuff. And then Kyle and I were inseparable and he was talking about the same stuff. It just came about. I ran into Scott Aukerman, who hosts <em><a href="http://www.earwolf.com/show/comedy-bang-bang" target="_blank">Comedy Bang Bang</a></em><span style="font-style: italic;">. </span>He was just starting his <a href="http://www.earwolf.com" target="_blank">Earwolf Podcast Network</a>. I told him I was considering starting a podcast, and he said, "We'd love for you to be on."</p>
<p><strong>MJ:</strong> Give us the basic premise of <em>Professor Blastoff</em>.</p>
<p><strong>TN:</strong> The idea is that we stumbled upon a hatch below Kyle's house and we found all this old radio equipment, and it used to belong to a professor who built a time machine and got lost in space, and we communicate with him through this equipment, and that spins us off into these topics. We bring in guests that are comedians or doctors, specialists, friends, musicians&mdash;we just ask that people be knowledgeable or passionate about the topic. We get a lot of things wrong. It's just a curiosity conversation, basically. I also describe it as if a teacher never quieted down the class clowns.</p>
<p><strong>MJ:</strong> What's the most eye-opening subject you've tackled?</p></body></html>
<p style="font-size: 1.083em;"><a href="/media/2013/04/interview-tig-notaro-cancer-professor-blastoff-inside-amy-schumer"><strong><em>Continue Reading &raquo;</em></strong></a></p>MediaInterviewTop StoriesFri, 26 Apr 2013 10:15:31 +0000223051 at http://www.motherjones.comTexas Plant May Not Have Been Inspected in Years, Despite Riskshttp://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/fertilizer-plant-safety-report-risks-texas
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
<html><body><p>As the news of the deadly explosion at the <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/west-texas-fertilizer-explosion" target="_blank">West Fertilizer Company plant</a> in West, Texas, has unfolded, journalists and observers wasted no time in wondering if anyone could have seen this catastrophe coming.</p>
<p>The <em>Dallas Morning News</em> <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/news/state/headlines/20130417-west-fertilizer-plant-said-in-report-that-it-presented-no-risk.ece" target="_blank">reported</a> that the West facility had claimed in an&nbsp;emergency planning report that an explosion of the kind that happened Wednesday would be virtually impossible. However, further analysis of this report shows that it contained other red flags about potential hazards and shoddy equipment. The plant's June 2011 <a href="http://www.rtknet.org/db/rmp/rmp.php?city=West&amp;state=TX&amp;datype=T&amp;reptype=f&amp;detail=4&amp;submit=GO" target="_blank">risk management plan (RMP)</a>, filed with the Environmental Protection Agency, identified several potential hazards, including equipment failure; toxic release; overpressure, corrosion, or overfilling<strong> </strong>of equipment; an earthquake; or a tornado.</p>
<p>The report asserted that the worst-case scenario for the plant "would be the release of the total contents of a storage tank released as a gas over 10 minutes." It reported no flammable material on site, despite listing 54,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia at the plant.</p>
<div class="inline inline-center" style="display: table; width: 1%;"><img alt="" class="image" src="/files/rmpreportcrop2.jpg"><div class="caption">Right to Know Network</div>
</div>
<p>In <a href="http://epa.gov/oem/docs/chem/Appendix-A-final.pdf#page=31" target="_blank">a list</a> of its regulated substances and thresholds, the EPA classifies anhydrous ammonia as toxic, but not flammable. OSHA <a href="http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/ammoniarefrigeration/" target="_blank">considers</a> anhydrous ammonia a flammable gas, <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ershdb/EmergencyResponseCard_29750013.html" target="_blank">as do</a> the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The National Fire Protection Association gives anhydrous ammonia a <a href="http://safety.nmsu.edu/programs/chem_safety/NFPA-ratingA-C.htm" target="_blank">flammability rating</a> of 1 (0 being the lowest, 4 the highest), likely because it requires a high concentration and strong ignition source to catch fire.</p>
<p>It's unclear if the EPA conducted any follow up in response to the potential hazards listed in plant's 2011 risk report. The safety inspector listed on the report was an employee of Security Truck Services, a transporter of anhydrous ammonia located in Baytown, Texas. The EPA and Security Truck Services have not yet responded to requests for comment on the inspection process.</p>
<p>In response to the West explosion, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) <a href="http://www.tceq.texas.gov/news/releases/4-18west" target="_blank">reports</a> that it has pursued seven investigations of the fertilizer plant since 2002, both routine and in response to complaints. The last recorded investigation occurred in 2007, 10 months after the agency dealt with an odor complaint.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><script type="text/javascript" src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/static/modules/gviz/1.0/chart.js"> {"dataSourceUrl":"//docs.google.com/spreadsheet/tq?key=0AswTUunZeAXddGJUSXZfNjBJckNQRUoyTE54QjE5dHc&transpose=0&headers=1&range=A1%3AB7&gid=1&pub=1","options":{"titleTextStyle":{"bold":true,"color":"#000","fontSize":16},"series":{"0":{"pointSize":4,"color":"#45818e","lineWidth":3}},"curveType":"","animation":{"duration":500},"lineWidth":2,"hAxis":{"useFormatFromData":true,"title":"TCEQ / MotherJones.com","minValue":null,"gridlines":{"count":"6"},"viewWindow":{"min":null,"max":null},"maxValue":null},"vAxes":[{"title":null,"useFormatFromData":true,"minValue":3000,"viewWindowMode":"explicit","viewWindow":{"min":3000,"max":6000},"gridlines":{"count":"4"},"maxValue":6000},{"useFormatFromData":true,"minValue":null,"viewWindow":{"min":null,"max":null},"maxValue":null}],"chartArea":{"height":"","width":"","left":"","top":""},"booleanRole":"certainty","title":"Number of Complaints Investigated by TCEQ","legend":"none","useFirstColumnAsDomain":true,"tooltip":{},"width":630,"height":320},"state":{},"view":{},"isDefaultVisualization":true,"chartType":"LineChart","chartName":"Chart 2"} </script></p>
<p><script type="text/javascript" src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/static/modules/gviz/1.0/chart.js"> {"dataSourceUrl":"//docs.google.com/spreadsheet/tq?key=0AswTUunZeAXddGJUSXZfNjBJckNQRUoyTE54QjE5dHc&transpose=0&headers=1&merge=COLS&range=A1%3AA7%2CC1%3AC7&gid=1&pub=1","options":{"titleTextStyle":{"bold":true,"color":"#000","fontSize":16},"series":{"0":{"color":"#134f5c","pointSize":4,"lineWidth":3}},"curveType":"","animation":{"duration":500},"lineWidth":2,"hAxis":{"useFormatFromData":true,"title":"TCEQ / MotherJones.com","minValue":null,"viewWindow":{"min":null,"max":null},"gridlines":{"count":"6"},"maxValue":null},"vAxes":[{"title":null,"useFormatFromData":true,"minValue":null,"viewWindow":{"min":null,"max":null},"gridlines":{"count":"4"},"maxValue":null},{"useFormatFromData":true,"minValue":null,"viewWindow":{"min":null,"max":null},"maxValue":null}],"chartArea":{"height":"","width":"","left":"","top":""},"title":"Total Number of TCEQ Investigations","booleanRole":"certainty","legend":"none","useFirstColumnAsDomain":true,"tooltip":{},"width":630,"height":320},"state":{},"view":{},"isDefaultVisualization":true,"chartType":"LineChart","chartName":"Chart 3"} </script></p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.texastribune.org/2013/04/18/questions-arise-west-tragedy/" target="_blank"><em>Texas Tribune</em></a> notes that this probably means the facility hadn't been inspected in the past five years. This would be consistent with a steep decline in the TCEQ's investigations in the past few years. The agency's last <a href="http://www.tceq.texas.gov/compliance/enforcement/reports/AER/annenfreport.html" target="_blank">annual enforcement report</a> showed that the number of complaints investigated has plummeted by 20 percent since 2007, though it is unclear it has been receiving fewer complaints. Its total number of investigations has fallen by more than 7 percent since 2007. Since 2008, the agency's operating budget has been slashed by nearly 40 percent. The TCEQ has not responded to a request for comment on its investigations and whether it was familiar with the West plant's 2011 risk report.</p>
<p>Turning to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for information on the plant's safety record turns up little. The plant's last OSHA inspection was <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=177836281" target="_blank">in 1985</a>&mdash;not surprising considering that it would take the short-staffed agency <a href="http://www.coshnetwork.org/enforcement-sensible-safeguards-could-have-prevented-explosion-deaths-west-fertilizer-plant" target="_blank">98 years</a> for the agency to inspect each of the state's workplaces. (It would take <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/05/us-steel-nick-revetta-osha" target="_blank">130 years</a> for OSHA to inspect every workplace in the United States.)</p>
<p><script type="text/javascript" src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/static/modules/gviz/1.0/chart.js"> {"dataSourceUrl":"//docs.google.com/spreadsheet/tq?key=0AswTUunZeAXddGJUSXZfNjBJckNQRUoyTE54QjE5dHc&transpose=0&headers=1&range=A1%3AB12&gid=0&pub=1","options":{"titleTextStyle":{"bold":true,"color":"#000","fontSize":16},"series":{"0":{"color":"#b45f06","pointSize":5,"lineWidth":3}},"curveType":"","animation":{"duration":500},"lineWidth":2,"hAxis":{"useFormatFromData":true,"title":"TCEQ / MotherJones.com","minValue":null,"viewWindow":{"min":null,"max":null},"gridlines":{"count":"11"},"maxValue":null},"chartArea":{"height":"61.875%","width":"86.371%","left":"10.067%","top":"19.886%"},"vAxes":[{"title":"in millions","useFormatFromData":true,"minValue":null,"viewWindow":{"min":null,"max":null},"gridlines":{"count":"4"},"maxValue":null},{"useFormatFromData":true,"minValue":null,"viewWindow":{"min":null,"max":null},"maxValue":null}],"booleanRole":"certainty","title":"The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's Budget Lows","legend":"none","useFirstColumnAsDomain":true,"tooltip":{},"width":630,"height":320},"state":{},"view":{},"isDefaultVisualization":true,"chartType":"LineChart","chartName":"Chart 1"} </script></p></body></html>
EnvironmentRegulatory AffairsTop Storiesfertilizer plant explosionFri, 19 Apr 2013 10:00:11 +0000Sydney Brownstone, Hannah Levintova, and Jaeah Lee222626 at http://www.motherjones.comWhat We Know About the Huge Explosion at the West, Texas, Fertilizer Planthttp://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/west-texas-fertilizer-explosion
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
<html><body><p>Shortly before 8 p.m. CDT on Wednesday, a massive explosion rocked the central Texas town of West following a fire at a fertilizer plant. Early reports are conflicting, but it appears that over a hundred of people have been injured, and dozens of homes and businesses have been damaged or destroyed, including a high school and a nursing home.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p>BREAKING: Stunning photo of apartment near explosion in <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23West">#West</a> Texas - @<a href="https://twitter.com/roncorning">roncorning</a> <a href="http://t.co/XoagVGF7o2" title="http://twitter.com/NewsBreaker/status/324732029709201408/photo/1">twitter.com/NewsBreaker/st&hellip;</a></p>
&mdash; NewsBreaker (@NewsBreaker) <a href="https://twitter.com/NewsBreaker/status/324732029709201408">April 18, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><p>Authorities are concerned that winds could carry the toxic fumes into residential areas. At a press conference on Wednesday night, Mayor Tommy Muska (who is also a volunteer firefighter) said, "A lot of people won't be here tomorrow&hellip;it's a cut across our hearts." Complicating matters is the location: A volunteer fire department serves the town of 2,700, and casualties are being transported to the nearest hospital in Waco&mdash;20 miles away.</p>
<p><span class="section-lead">Plant location:</span></p>
<p><iframe frameborder="no" height="400" scrolling="no" src="https://www.google.com/fusiontables/embedviz?viz=MAP&amp;q=select+col2+from+1Q-rhgAlIrpzRmZBx3h7sMf8CBF4rvgJFNJDe_5E&amp;h=false&amp;lat=31.814985845143067&amp;lng=-97.09011075134276&amp;z=16&amp;t=1&amp;l=col2&amp;y=2&amp;tmplt=2" width="630"></iframe></p>
<p>The fire escalated so fast because of its fuel:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p>To put <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23West">#West</a>, TX in perspective, 4,800 lbs of fertilizer were used in OKC bombing. That fit in a Ryder truck. This was an ENTIRE PLANT.</p>
&mdash; Drew Tuma (@DrewTumaABC3) <a href="https://twitter.com/DrewTumaABC3/status/324741024306053120">April 18, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><p>The clearest footage we have of the blast itself comes from a man who appears to have been&nbsp;watching the fire from his car with his young daughter. The explosion comes about 30 seconds in (warning: not for the faint of heart):</p>
<p class="rtecenter"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ROrpKx3aIjA" width="640"></iframe></p>
<p>The <em>Dallas Morning-News</em> captured the audio of the emergency dispatcher responding to the fire. At the 7:41 mark, the dispatcher advises that all units "need to load up and get out of there right now":</p>
<p><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F88357882" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<p>While the explosion registered on a seismograph over 400 miles away in Amarillo, Texas:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p>Explosion in <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23West">#West</a>, TX registered BIG TIME on seismograph in Amarillo (~400m from blast) <a href="http://t.co/CXDjXCDzuK" title="http://twitter.com/DrewTumaABC3/status/324738801262030848/photo/1">twitter.com/DrewTumaABC3/s&hellip;</a></p>
&mdash; Drew Tuma (@DrewTumaABC3) <a href="https://twitter.com/DrewTumaABC3/status/324738801262030848">April 18, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><p>Wednesday's fire came one day after the 66th anniversary of the worst industrial accident in American history&mdash;the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Disaster" target="_blank">Texas City disaster</a>, another fertilizer explosion that left 581 people dead when a French vessel hauling ammonium nitrate caught fire.</p>
<p>In February, a nearby school was evacuated due to a "concerning fire" from a fertilizer plant in the area:</p>
<div class="DV-container" id="DV-viewer-686693-community-memo-wis-temporary-evacuation">&nbsp;</div>
<script src="//s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/viewer/loader.js"></script><script>
&Acirc;&nbsp;DV.load("//www.documentcloud.org/documents/686693-community-memo-wis-temporary-evacuation.js", {
&Acirc;&nbsp; &Acirc;&nbsp;width: 630,
&Acirc;&nbsp; &Acirc;&nbsp;height: 500,
&Acirc;&nbsp; &Acirc;&nbsp;sidebar: false,
&Acirc;&nbsp; &Acirc;&nbsp;container: "#DV-viewer-686693-community-memo-wis-temporary-evacuation"
&Acirc;&nbsp;});
</script><noscript>
&Acirc;&nbsp;<a href="http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/686693/community-memo-wis-temporary-evacuation.pdf">Community Memo WIS Temporary Evacuation (PDF)</a>
&Acirc;&nbsp;<br>
&Acirc;&nbsp;<a href="http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/686693/community-memo-wis-temporary-evacuation.txt">Community Memo WIS Temporary Evacuation (Text)</a>
</noscript>
<p>By midnight on Thursday, more than 100 people had offered their homes to people displaced by the West, Texas explosion using a <a href="http://bit.ly/15nXkRo" target="_blank">shared Google Doc</a>. <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/texas/comments/1ckzw5/updating_map_for_west_texas_explosion" target="_blank">Over on Reddit</a>, people are attempting to assemble a crowdsourced map of the blast site and emergency services that you can see <a href="https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=209846025921424119826.0004da9950ad853cd5748&amp;msa=0&amp;ll=31.815657,-97.100344&amp;spn=0.039603,0.084543" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p>For on-the-ground coverage, check out the local station NBCDFW's&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Explosion-Rocks-Fertilizer-Plant-During-Fire-203508011.html" target="_blank">livestream</a>. On Twitter, follow the&nbsp;<em>Waco Tribune</em> (@wacotrib) and @DallasNews, as well as local reporters Lowell Brown (@LowellMBrown), <span class="st">Stewart McKenzie</span> (@CBS11ProdStew), and&nbsp;<span class="st">Mireya Villarreal</span> (@cbsmireya).</p>
<p><strong>UPDATE 1, Thursday, April 18, 1:03 p.m. EDT: </strong>Video of the devastation:</p>
<p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BWFXF3l9Gao" width="630"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>UPDATE 2, Thursday, April 18, 1:05 p.m. EDT: </strong>Texas Governor Rick Perry held a press conference Thursday on the explosion. Perry reiterated that the search for survivors continues.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p>ALERT: AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Texas Gov. Perry: Fertilizer plant explosion was "truly a nightmare scenario" for community.</p>
&mdash; WTOP(@WTOP) <a href="https://twitter.com/WTOP/status/324930163559256065">April 18, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><p><strong>UPDATE 3, Thursday, April 18, 2:34 p.m. EDT: </strong>Estimates have put the number of dead and missing at 15, but those figures are expected to rise. According to a 2011 safety plan filed with the EPA, the plant did not have firewalls or an automatic shutdown system, reported the <a href="http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-214654/" target="_blank"><em>Wall Street Journal</em></a>.</p>
<p><strong>UPDATE 4, Thursday, April 18, 3:11 p.m. EDT: </strong></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p>TCEQ official says <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23West">#West</a> fertilizer plant hasn't had a complaint since 2006 &mdash; meaning it hasn't been inspected since.</p>
&mdash; Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) <a href="https://twitter.com/TexasTribune/status/324930686664441856">April 18, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><p>"We haven't had a complaint from that facility since 2006," Zak Covar, director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, told the <em><a href="http://www.texastribune.org/2013/04/18/questions-arise-west-tragedy/" target="_blank">Texas Tribune</a></em>. Covar added that the facility had been "grandfathered" from some environmental regulations until 2004.</p>
<p><strong>UPDATE 5, Thursday, April 18, 3:56 p.m. EDT: </strong></p>
<p>The Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco will be spearheading the inquiry into what caused the explosion, the <a href="http://www.wacotrib.com/news/fire/authorities-say-between-and-killed-in-west-explosion-rescue-efforts/article_51082f25-3238-5c50-9d12-3f11bafcf352.html?abc=P6eqpJLR" target="_blank"><em>Waco Tribune</em></a> reports. Officials told the paper the investigation could take up to six months.</p>
<p><strong>UPDATE 6, Thursday, April 18, 8:30 p.m. EDT:</strong></p>
<p>As many feared and expected, the number of those killed by the blast has risen. Tommy Muska, the mayor of West Texas, confirmed to USA Today and the LA Times that as many <a href="http://www.statesman.com/ap/ap/top-news/dozens-hurt-in-fatal-texas-fertilizer-plant-blast/nXP5N/" target="_blank">as 35 are dead</a>, including 10 first responders. Waco <em>Tribune</em> reporter Lowell M. Brown captured the impact of this felt by one resident, who, after listing the names of volunteer firefighters still missing, told the paper the town would <a href="http://www.wacotrib.com/news/greater_waco/west/residents-stunned-by-blast-s-damage/article_d1486091-93e4-5288-9979-419375109a35.html" target="_blank">never be the same again</a>. Meanwhile, survivors of the blast are taking comfort in the famed kolaches and coffee at <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/czech-stop-open-during-west-texas-fertilizer-explosion" target="_blank">Czech Stop</a>&mdash;a nearby, 24-hour institution that kept its doors open through the tragedy.</p></body></html>
PoliticsTop StoriesThu, 18 Apr 2013 05:35:40 +0000—By the MoJo news team222531 at http://www.motherjones.comCharts: America's Troubled Affair with Overseas Adoptionhttp://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/charts-international-adoption-trends-liberia-haiti-uganda-congo-ethiopia-kyrgyzstan
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
<html><body><p>Adoptions between countries have been on a downward trend since 2004, when more nations began enacting restrictions to prevent illegal and unethical activities related to corruption and the trafficking of children. Yet at around that time, as Kathryn Joyce points out our companion story, "<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/christian-evangelical-adoption-liberia" target="_blank">Orphan Fever: The Evangelical Movement's Adoption Obsession</a>" a sort of adoption fever swept through America's evangelical churches:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[T]he Southern Baptist Convention, America's largest Christian denomination save the Catholic Church, <a href="http://news.sbts.edu/2009/06/25/sbc-messengers-enthusiastically-support-moores-resolution-on-adoption/" target="_blank">passed a resolution</a> calling on its 16 million members to get involved, whether that meant taking in children themselves, donating to adoptive families, or supporting the hundreds of adoption ministries that were springing up around the country to raise money and spread the word. Neo-Pentecostal leader Lou Engle <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/146634/exposing_the_christian_right%27s_new_racial_playbook?paging=off" target="_blank">also called</a> for mega-churches to take on the cause, which would give them "moral authority in this nation."</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The movement spawned numerous conferences and books built around the idea that adopting a needy child is a form of <a href="http://sbclife.net/articles/2009/08/sla11.asp" target="_blank">missionary work</a>. "The ultimate purpose of human adoption by Christians," author Dan Cruver wrote in his 2011 book, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Q_SZhbJPfYcC&amp;q=%22ultimate+purpose+of+human+adoption%22" target="_blank"><em>Reclaiming Adoption</em></a>, "is not to give orphans parents, as important as that is. It is to place them in a Christian home that they might be positioned to receive the gospel." At <a href="http://www.christianalliancefororphans.org/summit-2/" target="_blank">an adoption summit</a> hosted by the Christian Alliance for Orphans at Southern California's Saddleback Church, pastor Rick Warren told followers, "What God does to us spiritually, he expects us to do to orphans physically: be born again and adopted."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The countries still experiencing adoption booms amid the overall decline have often been the focus of intense missionary activity. "I think if evangelicals weren't driving a lot of the adoption business, there would be no international adoption, period," Karen Moline, a board member for the watchdog group <a href="http://www.pear-reform.org/" target="_blank">Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform</a>, told Joyce. The following charts show the cycles of annual adoptions from selected nations to families in the United States.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div class="inline inline-center" style="display: table; width: 1%"><img alt="US adoption rates by country" class="image" src="/files/AdoptionCharts2_630.png"></div></body></html>
PoliticsChartsInternationalReligionTop StoriesMon, 15 Apr 2013 10:00:15 +0000Sydney Brownstone and Carolyn Perot221706 at http://www.motherjones.comThe Revival of Thao Nguyenhttp://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2013/03/interview-thao-nguyen-get-down-stay-down-we-the-common
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
<html><body><p>It was 2008, and amid the wreckage of the financial meltdown, indie folk was having a moment. Bon Iver's "authentic" melancholy dominated a generation of breakup playlists. Fleet Foxes' swelling, choir-boy harmonies packed the pews. And a little-known songwriter named Thao Nguyen was picking up Cat Power comparisons with her album&nbsp;<em>We Brave Bee Stings and All</em>.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Reviewers praised Thao as quirky (she learned how to play guitar in her mother's laundromat) and perky (the record was stuffed with beat-boxing and handclaps), if not raw&mdash;at times her voice swung stubbornly off-key, which lent her an air of rough-hewn realness. The lyrics, too, cut deft and deep: Thao would sing in one moment about dewy childhood nostalgia, and in another dive into a dark corporeality of blood, bones, and heart attacks. She was 23 years old.</p></body></html>
<p style="font-size: 1.083em;"><a href="/mixed-media/2013/03/interview-thao-nguyen-get-down-stay-down-we-the-common"><strong><em>Continue Reading &raquo;</em></strong></a></p>Mixed MediaMusicTop StoriesMon, 25 Mar 2013 10:00:15 +0000Sydney Brownstone219701 at http://www.motherjones.com5 Shows You Don't Want to Miss at Noise Pop 2013http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2013/02/five-highlights-noise-pop-2013
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
<html><body><p>Small discovery music festivals are different from the major money-makers, and for that, lord bless 'em. Like New York's College Music Journal marathon, or <a href="http://www.cmj.com/marathon/" target="_blank">CMJ</a>, which floods lower Manhattan with hundreds of bands every fall, the Bay Area's <a href="http://schedule.noisepop.com/" target="_blank">Noise Pop</a> offers an action-packed week, a paralysis of choice, and the possibility of stumbling upon the unknown band that happens to blow up in 2013.</p>
<p>Typically, this might mean that there are plenty of duds amid the treasures, but I have to say that the 2013 assembly looks exquisite. Maybe it's a testament to the Bay Area's fertile music scene, or a renewed manifest destiny that's pulled talent to the spot, but the seven bands below&mdash;from the snarling guitars of the Bay Area garage scene to Thao Nguyen's inimitable vocals&mdash;represent just a slice of what's out there.&nbsp; If it helps ease the pain of choosing where to use your festival badge, here are my picks, which are by no means comprehensive, and of course, totally subjective.</p>
<p><strong>Body/Head<br>
Tuesday, 2/26 @The Rickshaw Stop</strong><br>
It still feels a little raw to discuss Kim Gordon's new project, Body/Head, with Sonic Youth on <a href="http://www.spinner.com/2011/11/29/sonic-youth-thurston-moore-divorce/" target="_blank">an indefinite break</a>. But all three members of the band have kept busy&mdash;Lee Ranaldo released <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/exclusive-stream-sonic-youths-lee-ranaldo-makes-his-solo-debut-20120312" target="_blank">a solo album</a> in 2012; Thurston Moore is set to tour in March with his new outfit, <a href="http://www.matadorrecords.com/matablog/category/chelsea-light-moving/" target="_blank">Chelsea Light Moving</a>; and last year, Gordon started playing shows with free-noise guitarist Bill Nace as Body/Head. Nace and Gordon's performances flower from on-stage improvisation, and from what few clips are available online, they promise to deliver something heavy and ferocious, tapping into Gordon's idolized experimental aesthetic.&nbsp;</p>
<center><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/q2N_Q0Xp8w0" width="560"></iframe></center>
<p><strong>The Mallard<br>
Thursday, 2/28 @The Great American Music Hall</strong><br>
There's something wholly bewitching about The Mallard's lead singer Greer McGettrick, between her rude, twangy guitar rhythms and her drawling assault on the microphone. McGettrick spent <a href="http://www.sfbg.com/2012/11/13/goldies-2012-mallard" target="_blank">five years</a> working the Fresno music scene before coming to San Francisco, where Thee Oh Sees' John Dwyer encouraged her to put out an album on his label Castle Face Records. That was last year's fuzzy and addictive <i>Yes On Blood</i>, and this year, the band is set to put out a "weirder" and "darker" followup. This might very well be the season that The Mallard comes into its own, though the band's shows are plenty dark and deliciously weird as is. (The Mallard will also be playing this show with Tehran's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghbk7zdEkVw" target="_blank">The Yellow Dogs</a>, who deserve an honorable mention: Before moving to the States in 2010, they played underground&mdash;<a href="http://www.rollingstoneme.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=178" target="_blank">literally</a>&mdash;risking imprisonment for pursuing a musical genre banned by the theocracy as too Western.)</p>
<center><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/TiieNHFb-AE" width="560"></iframe></center>
<p><strong>OBN IIIs/FUZZ, Blasted Canyons<br>
Thursday, 2/28 @The Knockout</strong><br>
There were too many bands I wanted to write about that were playing this particular show, so forgive the abridged descriptions of each: Austin's <a href="http://www.facebook.com/OBNIIIs" target="_blank">OBN IIIs</a> are co-headlining, having put out an irrepressibly catchy punk rock album on Matador last year. They're sharing top spot with <a href="http://pitchfork.com/news/49030-listen-ty-segall-forms-new-band-fuzz/" target="_blank">Fuzz</a>, the latest music project from the Bay Area's Ty Segall, who takes on vocal duties from behind a drum set. (Don't worry&mdash;Segall's just as raucous with sticks as he is with a guitar.) Also representing the Bay Area are <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ts5JdXnXLw" target="_blank">Blasted Canyons</a>, instrument-swapping ambassadors of noisy punk, featuring <a href="http://vimeo.com/32927564" target="_blank">Wax Idols</a>' fierce Heather Fedewa. All three bands are very much worth seeing on their own, but together, Thursday night at the Knockout makes for one stellar lineup.</p>
<center><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BG58DedaWOI" width="560"></iframe></center>
<p><strong>Rogue Wave<br>
Friday, 3/1, @Bottom of the Hill</strong><br>
Whatever happened to Rogue Wave? The Oakland band's discography is loaded with expertly crafted indie rock classics, but their history has been plagued by <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123452662" target="_blank">tragic hiatuses</a> over the past decade. With members weathering slipped discs, a kidney transplant, and an apartment fire resulting in the death of former bassist Evan Farrell, the band took another year-and-a-half break after the release of 2010's <i>Permalight</i>. This year, Rogue Wave will make an <a href="http://www.roguewavemusic.com/#home?filter=all" target="_blank">"intimate"</a> appearance at Noise Pop, and then perform at Napa Valley's <a href="http://www.roguewavemusic.com/#home?filter=all" target="_blank">Bottle Rock music festival</a> in May. It's a rare opportunity to catch them live, and an even better one to revisit and get lost in albums like <i>Out of the Shadow</i> and <i>Descended Like Vultures</i> beforehand.</p>
<center><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-xTzMjBpxGE" width="420"></iframe></center>
<p><strong>Thao &amp; The Get Down Stay Down<br>
Saturday, 3/2 @The Great American Music Hall</strong><br>
There's no real substitute for the sting and shape of Thao Nguyen's voice, her keen, imaginative lyrics, and the deceptively simple "pop" hooks embedded in the colorful, rough-around-the-edges compositions for which she's known. Earlier this month, the San Francisco songwriter and her band, The Get Down Stay Down, put out <a href="http://thaoandthegetdownstaydown.com/" target="_blank"><i>We the Common</i></a>, an album inspired in part by Nguyen's work with a women prisoner's advocacy program, and maybe Nguyen's most ambitious yet. Noise Pop is one of Nguyen's few California shows before she tours the country in March and April, and I intend to make the most of it.</p>
<center><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Np_aWvxc8vQ" width="560"></iframe></center>
<p class="rtecenter"><strong>Click </strong><a href="http://motherjones.com/category/secondary-tags/music-mondays" target="_blank"><strong>here</strong></a><strong> for more music coverage from <em>Mother Jones</em>.</strong></p></body></html>
Mixed MediaMusicMon, 25 Feb 2013 11:12:19 +0000Sydney Brownstone216971 at http://www.motherjones.comCan Sustainable Food Feed the Whole US?http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/02/what-does-future-food-movement-look
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
<html><body><p>In the early 20th&nbsp;century, political ads for then-presidential candidate Herbert Hoover promised Americans continued prosperity, or a "chicken in every pot."&nbsp;But today, in a new era of ecological crises, does our ability to feed ourselves in the future hinge on a chicken in every backyard?</p>
<p>This was one of the ideas explored at last night's panel of food journalists, moderated by <em>New York Times</em> contributing columnist <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/allison-arieff/" target="_blank">Allison&nbsp;Arieff</a> and co-sponsored by <em>Mother Jones</em> and the <a href="http://www.spur.org/" target="_blank">San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association</a> (SPUR). Addressing a room of 70-90 modern farmer types, urban-planners, and Bay Area locals, <em>Mother Jones</em>'&nbsp;<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott" target="_blank">Tom Philpott</a>, <em>Earth Island Journal</em>'s <a href="http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/oeuvre/jason/" target="_blank">Jason Mark</a>, and former&nbsp;Grist.org&nbsp;editor <a href="http://grist.org/author/twilight-greenaway/" target="_blank">Twilight Greenaway</a> discussed issues taking up the most space on their plates, along with their vision for the future of the sustainable food movement. You can listen to their conversation here:</p>
<p><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="http://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F80038770%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-Rwet1&amp;show_artwork=true&amp;secret_url=true" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<p>"The implication that we can vote with our fork will only get us so far," said Philpott, who went on to critique the idea that consumer choice and a backyard crop alone can reverse an entrenched trend of industrialized and consolidated control of the food supply.&nbsp;"The infrastructure for [small] farms doesn't exist," he said. "The only policy solution is federal policy."</p>
<p>One way to legislate change would be through anti-trust laws that dismantle Big Ag's grasp on production, Philpott explained, but even so, the sustainable food movement is dealing with&nbsp;its own internal struggles in attempting to expand. "What's the sweet spot for scale for the sustainable food movement?" asked Jason Mark. While organic farmers are still negotiating the balance between quality and affordability of their products, "It's a rational choice to buy junk food instead of healthy food," Mark added.</p>
<p>But as stubborn as the status quo may be, panelists also shared stories about small, ecology-minded innovation in the age of engineered&nbsp;shmeat ("meat grown on a sheet," Twilight&nbsp;Greenaway explained). Greenaway also discussed polyculture experiments&nbsp;in the Long Island Sound, and panelists bounced insights off one another about the challenges and promises of biotech in the sustainability movement. "We've got this beautiful niche happening," Philpott&nbsp;said of&nbsp;efforts to de-industrialize food production in the last decade. "But staying away from self-satisfaction," he added, "is paramount."</p></body></html>
Blue MarbleFoodWed, 20 Feb 2013 19:23:07 +0000Sydney Brownstone216571 at http://www.motherjones.com13 Governors Screwing Over the Uninsuredhttp://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/02/meet-governors-rejecting-expansion-medicaid
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
<html><body><p>Stephanie Mencimer's latest <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/great-florida-experiment" target="_blank"><em>Mother Jones</em> cover story</a> showcased the grim impact tea-party-influenced state lawmakers have had in Florida. Under Gov. Rick Scott, the state rejected billions of dollars in federal funding for any kind of Affordable Care Act-related program, with Scott leading the fight against the expansion of Medicaid coverage for the poor. But Scott's certainly not the only governor to balk at the idea of making public health insurance more inclusive. In the last month, Govs. Tom Corbett (R-Penn.), Pat McCrory (R-N.C.), and Scott Walker (R-Wis.) announced their states would not be expanding Medicaid to cover more low-income, uninsured residents, and Koch-funded super-PAC Americans for Prosperity <a href="http://www.mainlinemedianews.com/articles/2013/02/10/main_line_suburban_life/opinion/doc51114bba6fade776582782.txt" target="_blank">expressed its support</a> for a bill introduced in the Pennsylvania Legislature that would reject the expanded Medicaid coverage in state code.</p>
<p>Thirteen<strong> </strong>state governors are refusing to implement Medicaid expansion, despite the fact that it's being offered with cherries on top: The Affordable Care Act's timeline guarantees that the federal government would pay for 100 percent of the expansion in its first three years, tapering down to 90 percent of the paycheck by 2020. According to a recent <a href="http://www.kff.org/medicaid/upload/8384.pdf" target="_blank">Kaiser Family Foundation report</a>, expanding Medicaid to cover more low-income groups&nbsp;hovering above&nbsp;the federal poverty line in all states would cut the number of uninsured by nearly half nationwide, provided other features of the ACA are implemented.</p>
<p>Most of these governors argue the expansion would be too expensive, even though including the poor would only increase these states' Medicaid spending by an average of 3 percent over the next decade, and taxpayers will be paying for the federal program <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/06/28/medicaid_what_s_the_deal_.html" target="_blank">anyway</a>. Several of the governors rejecting Medicaid expansion ran for office on anti-Obamacare or tea party platforms, preaching austerity and less federal meddling. Maine's Gov. Paul LePage, whose state would actually see its portion of Medicaid spending reduced by expanding the program, argued that Maine would not be "complicit in the degradation" of the country's health care.</p>
<p>Not all GOP governors are rejecting Medicaid expansion&mdash;earlier this month, Michigan's Rick Snyder and Ohio's John Kasich agreed to let newly eligible groups onto their Medicaid rolls, joining GOP governors from Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and North Dakota who support the program's expansion. Pressure for other governors to concede is mounting&mdash;even Florida governor Rick Scott <a href="http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/2013/01/scotts-budget-education-health-care-and-prisons.html" target="_blank">now appears</a> to be keeping the state's options open. <strong>Update, 6:55 p.m. EST:</strong> Scott just announced that he will be supporting Medicaid expansion in Florida, <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/gov-rick-scott-feds-reach-medicaid-deal/1275937" target="_blank">reports the<em> Tampa Bay Times</em></a>. The announcement came hours after the federal government agreed it would allow the state to privatize the service through a state managed care plan.</p>
<p>Here are the players still holding out:</p>
<div class="inline inline-left" style="width: 1%; display: table;"><img alt="" class="image" src="/files/512px-Robert_Bentley.jpg"><div class="caption">Wikimedia Commons</div>
</div>
<p><strong>Robert Bentley (R-Ala.)</strong></p>
<p>When it comes to the Affordable Care Act, Bentley did not mince words: "It is, in my opinion, truly the worst piece of legislation that has ever been passed in my lifetime," the governor said at a <a href="http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2012/11/gov_robert_bentley_alabama_health_care_exchange.html" target="_blank">luncheon last year</a>. After last year's presidential elections, Bentley also announced he would not be supporting Medicaid expansion&mdash;a move that would add more than 300,000 Alabama residents to Medicaid rolls, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation report. Like his fellow Republican governors, Bentley cited the costliness of covering the poor as the reason he was opposed (expanding Medicaid coverage would cost the state some $771 million), but researchers at the <a href="http://c.%09http://www.uab.edu/news/latest/item/2970-medicaid-expansion-could-mean-1-billion-gain-for-alabama" target="_blank">University of Alabama-Birmingham</a> found that opening the program to more low-income groups would actually generate $1.7 billion in state tax revenue over the decade it's implemented, in addition to $20 billion in new income.</p>
<div class="inline inline-left" style="width: 1%; display: table;"><img alt="" class="image" src="/files/Nathan_Deal%2C_official_110th_Congress_photo.jpg"><div class="caption">Wikimedia Commons</div>
</div>
<p><strong>Nathan Deal (R-Ga.)</strong></p>
<p>Georgia has the <a href="http://cber.cba.ua.edu/edata/est_prj/Small%20Area%20Health%20Insurance%20Estimates%20for%20States,%202010.xlsx" target="_blank">fifth-highest rate of uninsured residents</a> in the country, and expanding its Medicaid program would accommodate 698,000 new Medicaid enrollees, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. A report from <a href="http://www.law.harvard.edu/academics/clinical/lsc/documents/CHLPI%%2020advocate%20tool%20state%20stances%20on%20Medicaid2.pdf" target="_blank">Harvard Law School</a> reveals that Georgia&mdash;like Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas&mdash;also has one of the highest rates of new and existing AIDS cases, along with the worst outcomes nationwide, in part because the poor aren't able to access treatment through the state's strict Medicaid eligibility requirements.</p>
<div class="inline inline-left" style="width: 1%; display: table;"><img alt="" class="image" src="/files/ButchOtterOfficialCongressionalPortrait.jpg"><div class="caption">Wikimedia Commons</div>
</div>
<p><strong>Butch Otter (R-Idaho)</strong></p>
<p>In July 2012, Otter appointed <a href="http://www.boiseweekly.com/CityDesk/archives/2012/07/14/gov-otter-appoints-obamacare-working-groups-to-study-potential-effects" target="_blank">a 14-member committee</a> to weigh the pros and cons of expanding Medicaid coverage to more of Idaho's poor. In November, the panel <a href="http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2012/nov/09/idaho-panel-unanimously-favors-medicaid-expansion/" target="_blank">unanimously agreed</a> that the state should accept expansion, arguing that this reform would save the state the money it bleeds in the state-funded ER costs its uninsured residents can't pay. But in 2013, the governor announced Idaho would not be pursuing Medicaid expansion&mdash;despite the fact that the state would only have to spend $261 million to cover up to roughly 100,000 newly eligible Idahoans, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/07/idaho-medicaid-obamacare-governor_n_2426983.html" target="_blank">receiving $3.7 billion</a> from the federal government over 10 years.</p>
<div class="inline inline-left" style="width: 1%; display: table;"><img alt="" class="image" src="/files/jindal3.jpg"><div class="caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/22007612@N05/5854788896/">Gage Skidmore</a>/Compfight</div>
</div>
<p><strong>Bobby Jindal (R-La.)</strong></p>
<p>One of the most outspoken critics of Medicaid expansion, Jindal published <a href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-01-28/opinions/36594805_1_eligibility-medicaid-employer-sponsored-coverage" target="_blank">an op-ed</a> in the<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><em>Washington Post</em> in January challenging the president to meet with the Republican governors who would prefer to keep Medicaid coverage "flexible," i.e., thin. With <a href="http://cber.cba.ua.edu/edata/est_prj/Small%20Area%20Health%20Insurance%20Estimates%20for%20States,%202010.xlsx" target="_blank">more than 20 percent</a> of its residents uninsured, Louisiana has one of the highest proportions of uninsured in the country, compounded by the fact that the state also maintains some of the nation's tightest Medicaid eligibility requirements.</p>
<p>Hospitals and Democratic lawmakers alike have lobbied Jindal to change his mind&mdash;last December, Sen. Mary Landrieu pointed out <a href="http://www.landrieu.senate.gov/?p=press_release&amp;id=3482" target="_blank">in a letter to Jindal</a> that Medicaid expansion could actually save the state some $267 million in unpaid care costs. "I know from your many speeches across the nation during the recent Presidential campaign your steadfast opposition to the Affordable care act," Landrieu wrote. "However, the election is over."</p>
<div class="inline inline-left" style="width: 1%; display: table;"><img alt="" class="image" src="/files/PaulLePage.jpg"><div class="caption">Wikimedia Commons</div>
</div>
<p><strong>Paul LePage (R-Maine)</strong></p>
<p>Uncompensated care in Maine hospitals <a href="http://www.pressherald.com/news/states-hospitals-double-free-care-over-five-years-_2012-05-07.html" target="_blank">has doubled</a> over the past five years, according to a 2012 report from the <em>Portland Press Herald</em>. The state is also one of 10 identified by the Kaiser Family Foundation that would see direct savings from implementing Medicaid expansion, as the federal government would pay more for those currently eligible for the program. But last year, LePage announced that Maine would not be expanding its Medicaid program, <a href="http://content.govdelivery.com/bulletins/gd/MEGOV-5cfe96" target="_blank">writing in a letter</a> to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: "Maine will not be complicit in the degradation of our nation's premier health care system."</p>
<div class="inline inline-left" style="width: 1%; display: table;"><img alt="" class="image" src="/files/Governor_Phil_Bryant.jpg"><div class="caption">Wikimedia Commons</div>
</div>
<p><strong>Phil Bryant (R-Miss.)</strong></p>
<p>"As governor, I will fight to protect our future," Bryant <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/1/the-truth-about-obamacare-in-mississippi-taxpayers/?page=all" target="_blank">wrote in an op-ed</a> in the <em>Washington Times</em> last October. "And that means that I will resist any effort to expand Medicaid in this state."</p>
<p>Arguing that Medicaid expansion could result in 1 in 3 Mississippians having Medicaid health insurance, Bryant said he'd rather have 1 in 3 residents "earn health care coverage through good-paying jobs." He <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/1/the-truth-about-obamacare-in-mississippi-taxpayers/?page=all" target="_blank">also stressed</a> personal responsibility, exercise, diet, and his own crusade to end teen pregnancy&mdash;via <a href="http://msdh.ms.gov/msdhsite/_static/resources/4696.pdf" target="_blank">abstinence education programs</a>. Mississippi has the eighth-highest rate of uninsured people in the country, and, according to Kaiser Family Foundation, some 231,000 Mississippians would newly enroll in Medicaid if expanded. Some state legislators are still hoping to discuss the idea of growing the program through a state Senate bill <a href="http://www.cdispatch.com/news/article.asp?aid=22055&amp;TRID=1&amp;TID=" target="_blank">reauthorizing Medicaid</a>.</p>
<div class="inline inline-left" style="display: table; width: 1%;"><img alt="" class="image" src="/files/Pat_McCrory_July_2012.jpg"><div class="caption">Wikimedia Commons</div>
</div>
<p><strong>Pat McCrory (R-N.C.)</strong></p>
<p>Last week, McCrory announced he would be throwing his weight behind a bill <a href="http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/02/12/2675166/mccrory-gop-plan-to-stop-nc-medicaid.html" target="_blank">that would reject Medicaid expansion</a> in his state. "It would be unfair to the taxpayers, unfair to the citizens currently receiving Medicaid and unfair to create a new bureaucracy to implement the system," McCrory <a href="http://www.wral.com/mccrory-backs-bill-to-stop-medicaid-expansion/12095491/" target="_blank">said Tuesday</a>. Roughly <a href="http://www.mountainx.com/article/42091/New-figures-show-percentage-of-N.C.s-uninsured-by-county-demographics" target="_blank">1.6 million</a> North Carolinians are uninsured, and the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that more than 500,000 residents would enroll if the state extended more coverage to the poor.</p>
<div class="inline inline-left" style="width: 1%; display: table;"><img alt="" class="image" src="/files/Mary_Fallin_official_110th_Congress_photo.jpg"><div class="caption">Wikimedia Commons</div>
</div>
<p><strong>Mary Fallin (R-Okla.)</strong></p>
<p>While Fallin, like other governors, cited costs as one reason to abstain from Medicaid expansion, the <a href="http://okpolicy.org/medicaid-expansion-ok-policys-letter-to-leadership" target="_blank">Oklahoma Policy Institute</a>, a nonpartisan think tank, argued that the net gain of Medicaid expansion would be positive, with costs "likely to be largely or fully offset by budget savings" in other state agencies like the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. The <a href="http://www.cbpp.org/files/healthtoolkit2012/Oklahoma.pdf" target="_blank">Center on Budget and Policy Priorities</a> estimates that 225,000 Oklahomans would be newly eligible for expanded Medicaid, and that the state would spend between $549 to $789 million on the expanded program in its first six years.</p>
<div class="inline inline-left" style="width: 1%; display: table;"><img alt="" class="image" src="/files/TomCorbett-McCainRally2008_flipped_0.jpg"><div class="caption">Wikimedia Commons</div>
</div>
<p><strong>Tom Corbett (R-Pa.)</strong></p>
<p>"Washington is asking us to expand Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act without any clear guidance or reasonable assurances," Corbett <a href="http://articles.mcall.com/2013-02-05/news/mc-pa-tom-corbett-budget-speech-20130205_1_work-ethic-new-jobs-business-leaders/5" target="_blank">told Pennsylvania state legislators</a> during his budget address on February 5. "It would be financially unsustainable for the taxpayers, and I cannot recommend a dramatic Medicaid expansion.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Corbett, who <a href="http://blogs.philadelphiaweekly.com/phillynow/2012/06/28/in-blow-to-gov-tom-corbett-health-care-law-ruled-constitutional/" target="_blank">helped file a lawsuit against the ACA</a> while he was state attorney general and running for governor in 2010, is up for reelection in 2014&mdash;though only 31 percent of the state thinks he deserves another shot, according to a recent <a href="http://www.politicspa.com/quinnipiac-poll-gender-gap-sinks-corbett-numbers/45656/" target="_blank">Quinnipiac University poll</a>. The rate of uninsured residents in Philadelphia and surrounding counties <a href="http://f.%09http://www.philly.com/philly/health/20130208_Uninsured_S_E__Pennsylvanians_have_nearly_doubled_since_2000_-_survey.html" target="_blank">has doubled</a> in a little over a decade, and Medicaid expansion would enroll more than half a million newly eligible Pennsylvanians for the program's coverage.</p>
<div class="inline inline-left" style="width: 1%; display: table;"><img alt="" class="image" src="/files/NikkiHaley.jpg"><div class="caption">Wikimedia Commons</div>
</div>
<p><strong>Nikki Haley (R-S.C.)</strong></p>
<p>Like Rick Scott, Haley was swept into office on a tide of tea party fervor. In July of 2012, she announced <a href="http://charleston.thedigitel.com/politics/nikki-haley-south-carolina-will-not-expand-medicai-39774-0702" target="_blank">on Facebook</a> that South Carolina would not expand its Medicaid program, though, like several of the other states on this list, South Carolina has one of the higher proportions of uninsured in the country, with <a href="http://cber.cba.ua.edu/edata/est_prj/Small%20Area%20Health%20Insurance%20Estimates%20for%20States,%202010.xlsx" target="_blank">more than 20 percent of its population</a> lacking health care coverage.</p>
<div class="inline inline-left" style="width: 1%; display: table;"><img alt="" class="image" src="/files/Photo_of_Gov._Dennis_Daugaard.jpg"><div class="caption">Wikimedia Commons</div>
</div>
<p><strong>Dennis Daugaard (R-S.D.)</strong></p>
<p>Parents of Medicaid-eligible kids who earn more than $9,936 a year <a href="http://dss.sd.gov/medicaleligibility/familieschildren/lifincomeguidelines.asp" target="_blank">make too much</a> to qualify for South Dakota Medicaid.&nbsp;But Daugaard opposes expanding Medicaid to cover more of the state's uninsured adults, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/05/dennis-daugaard-obamacare-rejects-medicaid_n_2244970.html" target="_blank">explaining</a> to one local radio station: "I want to stress that these are able-bodied adults. They're not disabled: We already cover the disabled. They're not children: We already cover children. These are adults&mdash;all of them." According to a <a href="http://www.kff.org/medicaid/upload/8384.pdf" target="_blank">2012 Kaiser Family Foundation analysis</a>, accepting Medicaid expansion would enroll some new 44,000 South Dakotans for Medicaid coverage, and cost the state a 3.6 percent increase in its Medicaid expenditure over ten years.</p>
<div class="inline inline-left" style="width: 1%; display: table;"><img alt="" class="image" src="/files/perry.jpg"><div class="caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/22007612@N05/6236340633/">Gage Skidmore</a>/Compfight</div>
</div>
<p><strong>Rick Perry (R-Texas)</strong></p>
<p>Perry, like Scott and Jindal, has been an early expansion naysayer, though his state has <a href="http://cber.cba.ua.edu/edata/est_prj/Small%20Area%20Health%20Insurance%20Estimates%20for%20States,%202010.xlsx" target="_blank">the highest rate of uninsured in the nation</a>. "To expand this program is not unlike adding a thousand people to the <em>Titanic</em>," he told <a href="http://video.foxnews.com/v/1727297292001/gov-rick-perry-responds-to-obamacare-ruling/" target="_blank">Fox News</a> in July of 2012. Perry argued that expanding Medicaid coverage would bankrupt the state, though by investing $15 billion in the expansion, Texas <a href="http://www.texastribune.org/2013/02/04/agenda-texas-medicaid-expansion/" target="_blank">would receive $100 billion</a> in federal funding and cover 1.8 million newly enrolled residents under the program.</p>
<div class="inline inline-left" style="display: table; width: 1%;"><img alt="" class="image" src="/files/512px-Scott_Walker_primary_victory_2010.jpg"><div class="caption">Wikimedia Commons</div>
</div>
<p><strong>Scott Walker (R-Wis.)</strong></p>
<p>Wisconsin's tea party governor is the latest to join the anti-Medicaid expansion crew, but is also advocating a novel approach: Instead of expanding his state's Medicaid coverage, which already covered low-income individuals up to 200 percent of the federal poverty line (with an enrollment limit), Walker would hike that Medicaid eligibility back to 100 percent of the FPL, remove the enrollment limit, and set up a health exchange to provide private insurance to other low income groups. As the <em>Washington Post</em>'s Sarah Kliff points out, this means that Wisconsin <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/13/can-wisconsin-expand-coverage-without-medicaid-governor-walker-thinks-so/" target="_blank">will be turning down</a> the federal government's offer to pay for new Medicaid enrollees.</p>
<p><em>This article has been revised.</em></p></body></html>
MoJoHealthHealth CareTop StoriesWed, 20 Feb 2013 11:01:38 +0000Sydney Brownstone216011 at http://www.motherjones.com